RevCyn

When I came to Jackson, MI in 2004, it took me a while to realize how unsupported the LGBTQ community felt here. During my seminary years, all my LGBTQ friends and colleagues were entirely out of the closet, and as someone with cis-gender and heterosexual privilege, I had basically forgotten that the closet could still exist. But here in Jackson, I found, the closet was still deep and wide. People I knew through church or PFLAG or social justice work might be out in one context and still in with family, work, or other friends. So I learned this again, and said it many times to people in one context or another that Jackson was not as progressive with LGBTQ rights as many other locations.  I said it, and I knew it, but I hadn't felt it. In Michigan we have no state-wide protections for LGBTQ people. In fact, when our state's civil rights legislation, the Elliott-Larsen Act was passed in 1976, LGBTQ protection was specifically left out because of fear that adding LGBTQ protecti...

Michigan's Governor Snyder signed a new set of discrimination laws yesterday.  "Senate Substitute for House Bill No. 4188" states : "Private child placing agencies, including faith-based child placing agencies, have the right to free exercise of religion under both the state and federal constitutions.  Under well-settled principles of constitutional law, this right includes the freedom to abstain from conduct that conflicts with an agency's sincerely held religious beliefs." Both faith-based and non-faith-based agencies receive government money.  Given the separation of church and state, it should be the case that agencies receiving federal or state money are not allowed to religiously discriminate in who they serve.  However, this separation has been eroded over the years in a multitude of ways, from President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision.  Even so, this is a new level of affront to freedom of relig...

Terry Gross's interview of Hillary Clinton on NPR is getting some press, because of a length exchange in which Terry Gross pressed Hillary Clinton for an answer as to whether or not she had "evolved" on the issue of same-sex marriage, or whether she had been in favor of it much longer, but didn't take a stand for political reasons.  After several exchanges, the picture emerged of an evolving perspective on Clinton's part.  Clinton said: Were there activists who were ahead of their time?  Well that was true in every human rights and civil rights movement, but the vast majority of Americans were just waking up to this issue and beginning to think about it, and grasp it for the first time, and think about their neighbor down the street who deserved to have the same rights as they did, or their son, or their daughter. It has been an extraordinarily fast, by historic terms social, political, and legal transformation and we ought to celebrate that instead of...

Guest Blog Entry by the Rev. Jennie Ann Barrington, Interim Minister for The Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock, Arkansas; May 12, 2014 “There is a creative tendency in the universe to produce worthwhile things, and moments come when we can work with it and it can work through us. But the tendency in the universe to produce worthwhile things is by no means omnipotent. (It is not all-powerful; we have to work with it; we have to do our part.) Other forces work against it. This creative principle is everywhere. It is a continuing process. Insofar as you partake of this creative process, you partake of the divine, and that participation is your immortality, reducing the question of whether your individuality survives the death of the body to the estate of irrelevancy. Our true destiny, as co-creators in the universe, is our dignity and our grandeur.” (Alfred North Whitehead) This weekend I realized I was wrong. I’ve never been enamored of officiating weddings for people...

A friend and colleague asks, "When did our Principles ever lead us to a place we didn't already want to go?" It's a bit like asking "When is something truly altruistic?"  The fact that I did something might argue that to some extent I wanted to do it -- that I felt doing it served some purpose.  But sweeping aside the philosophical question, I think I can point to places our Principles have led me that I was at least conflicted about.  The first time I remember being pushed by my principles to do something that I was uncomfortable doing was in graduate school.  I became aware that I had what I knew was an unreasonable fear of people with HIV/AIDS.  And I felt that my principles called me to address my fear and get over it.  And so I volunteered to spend my spring break with the Alternative Spring Break program working for the Mobile (AL) AIDS Support Services.  I've written about that experience in this blog before. The next time I felt like my ...

It's time to finish up my series about my memories of that day in Ann Arbor.  With the abundance of clergy we had, the blessing was that those who had religious communities were often able to find their own clergy person and have them perform the ceremony, and many others were able to find someone who represented their own faith tradition, whether Christian or Jewish or Pagan.  I did see one African-American couple come down who were specifically looking for an African-American minister.  It sounded like they had seen him earlier and were trying to find him again.  I don't know if they did, or not.  I hadn't seen him, but the room was very crowded for most of the day.  Those couples without connections to local clergy had their pick of the rest of us who were there available. I officiated at two services.  And just enjoyed the day and celebrated with other couples and witnessed and helped the rest of the time.  The first wedding I performed t...

Over a decade ago, I decided I wasn't going to be an instrument of the state anymore if the state continued to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying.  I talked to my congregation and the board of trustees about it and then, in October 2003, I took a public vow not to sign any more marriage licenses until the Commonwealth of Massachusetts allowed same-sex marriage.  I was one of about a dozen clergy who had done so, one of whom was the Rev. Fred Small, author of the beloved song "Everything Possible."  After hearing Fred Small talk about his decision and his reasoning, my mind was made up.  I cried when I heard him, because he had given name and voice to what I had been feeling, and had reached a solution that removed him from the wrong equation.  I knew I had to do likewise. A year and a half later, in May of 2004, same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.  I performed a few weddings that spring and happily signed licenses for all, and then, tha...

Before I write about the the marriages, and what a joy that was -- I want to write about the helping things that people did, because they made a huge difference. At the Washtenaw County Clerk's office, there were about twenty clergy and judges present ready to marry people, and they came from all sorts of different faiths.  There were a few of us Unitarian Universalists (the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer, the Rev. Tom Schade, and myself, and the Rev. Mark Evens was there at the beginning).  I saw several UCC ministers.  There was a rabbi.  There were three Pagan officiants of various stripes.  There was a Native American officiant.  There was an Episcopal priest.  I'm sure other Protestant denominations were present.  And then there were a handful or more of Universal Life Church members. Now, I've always had a sort of a "thing" about ULC ministers.  It's always seemed a bit unfair or wrong that without any training and any credentialing proces...

I arrived at the Washtenaw County Clerk's office about 9:05, and licenses were to begin being issued at 9:00 a.m., so I was a tad late.  The crowd was packed into the building, and a few people were milling outside, but the line wasn't yet out the doors.  I walked in and heard a gentleman with a clipboard telling a couple where they should go and what they should do.  I approached him and said, "I'm clergy.  Where do I go?"  He said, "There's a room downstairs.  The stairs are over there.  And thank you for being here!"  I headed down stairs and asked someone downstairs where I was to go.  They told me the clergy were all in the back corner of the room ahead.  I wove my way through the crowd, and saw the Rev. Mark Evens, who is very tall, and knew I was in the right area.  I tossed my coat on a table that had a bunch of coats, and greeted Mark (who had to depart early) and the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer and the Rev. Tom Schade.  I ...

This past Friday, after 5 p.m., when the county clerks had just closed, Judge Bernard Friedman , of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, ruled that our constitutional ban against same-sex marriage, voted into the constitution in 2004, was unconstitutional.  In his findings , he said: In attempting to define this case as a challenge to “the will of the people,” Tr. 2/25/14 p. 40, state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people. No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples. It is the Court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor , 133 S. Ct. at 2694. Today’s decis...

I met with a local high school's GSA a week or two ago, and was talking about what the Bible does and does not say about homosexuality.  I believe that even Biblical literalists are choosing what parts of the Bible they take literally and currently and what parts they choose to understand either as metaphor or as written for a certain historical context.  Even the fundamentalists don't follow all of the purity laws.  And they're choosing to place emphasis on the passages that judge over the passages that preach love and forgiveness.  Given that you have to pick and choose, the question really is why some people choose to pick hate.  I said, "I choose to pick love." The hard part about choosing love is the same as the hard part of believing in the inherent worth and dignity of all people and the hard part of believing in universal salvation.  The hard part of choosing love is applying it to someone you see as having chosen a path of hatred and pain.  ...

Today I went along with the Hanover-Horton High School Gay-Straight Alliance to view the historic trial going on in the federal court in Detroit that will potentially overturn Michigan's constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage.  The GSA group walked proudly and peacefully past the protestors for "traditional marriage" outside as we came into the federal court building.  Judge Friedman greeted us warmly as we came into the courtroom, asking if we were the high school group that he had heard was coming, giving the group president a moment to introduce the group, and saying he would stay around afterward to share some information about how the courts work and answer any questions excepting that he could not answer questions pertaining to the case. Today in DeBoer vs. Snyder there was one witness on the stand.  DeBoer's team called their Harvard's Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History , Dr. Nancy Cott.  In addition to being a professor of hist...

I was once a big Orson Scott Card fan.  The number of Orson Scott Card books I own may still outnumber any single other author on the dozens of bookshelves in my home.  I read his works voraciously in college and in my early 20s.  I read the Ender saga, the Alvin Maker series, the Homecoing Saga, and assorted other books and short stories of his.  I recently re-read Ender's Game and still enjoyed it.  At some point in reading his books, however, I suddenly stopped, because I felt like I was reading the same story over and over again -- the same boy messiah saving the human race -- and I disagreed with the theology underpinning it.  But I enjoyed all those stories of his up until that time.  I still do, when I read them.  I recently re-read Ender's Game and found myself wanting to read them all over again, or start reading the later books in the series that I never read, or the Shadow Saga. But between the time I was the big Orson Scott Card ...

An article this week from Tiffany K. Wayne, titled Same-Sex Marriage Does Threaten "Traditional Marriage" does an excellent job at pointing out just exactly what is threatened by same-sex marriage: traditional gender roles.  Wayne writes: Same-sex marriage makes a lie of the very foundation of traditional gender roles.  Same-sex marriages say that a woman can run a household, or that a man can raise a child. This does not square with those whose lives and beliefs and relationships depend on upholding and living their lives based on differences between the sexes. Wayne is right on in her analysis.  This is absolutely about equality .  It is absolutely also about feminism and gender roles.  The fight against same-sex marriage is inherently linked to the fights against women's reproductive freedom.  Wayne doesn't get into religion in her article, which is a shame, because I think it would further her argument.  If one looks to the Bible for what ...

 (Continuing from Part 1 ) Well, it seems the video of young Girl Scout, Taylor, which asking you to boycott Girl Scout cookies because Girl Scouts is inclusive of transgender girls, has been taken down. There are a number of well-done responses from Girl Scouts that are available, however.  Some of my favorites are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAnt5cqQ4Ss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCDtaGCjujc http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=qxWM3dxfbX0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BChDci9mkE&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=k85-CXLLIek These Girl Scouts make several good points about what Girl Scouts is all about.  A primary one is about the Girl Scout Law.  In her original video, Taylor talked about the line of the Girl Scout Law that says, "Honest and Fair," and how Girl Scouts is somehow not being honest if they're not proclaiming loudly to everyone involved that there are transgende...